Some Things Are Meant To Be
by A Once Told Story
Summary: Fíli falls side by side with his brother, defending their uncle in the Battle of Five Armies. But death will not come to the wounded prince, whose injuries go way deeper than the naked eye can see. When he finally wakes up, the world he comes back to is nothing like the world he left behind - a world where his brother was always by his side... (Alternate ending to BoFA)


Warmth is a matter of perspective. A blazing sun shines upon the battlefield, heating my armor and blinding me where I lay, face up towards the sky. The mass of bodies around me and the fluids they spill have yet to grow cold. Whatever adrenalin is still pumping through my veins, struggling for one last heartbeat after another, is keeping my body warm. Yet light is nothing but an illusion, and to me there is no such thing as heat. Cold is all I really feel. Just this icy, immobilizing cold in an endless emptiness, where light does not exist.

I think he took it with him when he left, so that he could be sure that I wound follow. For surely he has gone, my beloved little brother. For what must have been hours his hand lay in my hand, weakly clenching my fingers and proving by sheer movement that he was still there with me. With my ability to move all but taken away from me, my whispering his name and whatever consoling words that came to mind was all I could do to return the favor. However, his movements had faded. I was convinced that if I could move my head, all I'd find would be the empty body of Kíli, the remains of what had once been my other half.

I had yet to register the lack of movement from not only Kíli, but the rest of the world as well. The battle was over, and the air hung heavy over every surviving creature now. Not that I felt it, or had the strength or will to care. With Kíli gone, there was no purpose left in my world. I had already helped reclaim our homeland, fought my best in a battle we had most surely won, I had defended my uncle and my brother to the best of my effort. If that effort had not been enough, if my baby brother's heart had truly stopped for good, then why was I still here? Why was I not drifting off into the great halls of Mahal to greet Kíli in death? Why, with my uncle safe wherever Beorn had carried him to and the battle over, why did my creator not let me go?

Something broke through to me as I lay there — realization. However bad my injuries hurt, no matter how long I would just lay there and wait for death to come, my suffering was only being prolonged. I was not meant to leave this world yet. My role had yet to be played out. I know that now, because they found me. They found me and carried me away from all the gore and darkness and cold.

I think it was Dwalin who found me, but I do not remember being carried to the healing tent. The effort it took me to ask the elderly warrior what had become of my brother was my finale, and then and there was when I fell away into the true darkness. Not emptiness and cold, but the comfort of darkness at night when all you want to do is fall asleep.

And I did. Not death, I would still not be granted such mercy. Because somehow, sometime after the Battle of Five Armies, I woke up.

My eyes flickered open and the first thing I saw was a face who had not been on my mind since the first battle horn had sounded. There sat my mother, the respected shield maiden of Erebor, Dís daughter of Thrain. She just sat there, looking at me with the eyes which I had inherited — crystal blue with just a hint of gold around the iris. And she was smiling. Not the smile a mother would give her child out of pure love. Not even a smile out of gratitude to Mahal that said child had been allowed to live another day. No. This smile was heavier, like the weight of something heart-breaking was hanging from the corners of her mouth and yet she strained herself to be strong enough to smile anyway. I read guilt and pity in her eyes, drowning out any happiness she might have felt.

"Mother," I croaked, and immediately she silenced me.

She took my hand and kissed it gently.

"Sleep, my beautiful Fíli. Go to sleep and find me your brother. Tell him I love him."

Her words seemed to bring the comfort my heart had forgotten, and I easily fell back into a deep sleep that seemed to last an eternity. But as rested and peaceful as I felt in sleep, running off with Kíli to the places of wonder and adventure the real world could not provide us, eventually I did wake up again.

The first thing I really learned was heart-breaking to say the least, but it came with a message that eased the pain as swiftly as it had come. Thorin Oakenshield, my beloved uncle, had not survived long after the battle's end. However, he had died an honorable death, after having given his apologies to Bilbo Baggins. Most comforting for me, Thorin had given his blessings to me, his heir, before he went to join Mahal in the great halls of Durin.

There followed months of healing, slow and agonizing weeks bed-bound, with nothing but sleep and unconsciousness to comfort me. Somewhere in all this time my mind had gotten so used to seeing my brother every time I closed my eyes that, in my waking hours, he would still be there with me. Kíli could not have left me, for if he had I would have followed him. Nothing in life had ever kept us apart, so why should anything in death be able to? Kíli was with me still, and I was happy.

Of course, happiness alike so many other things, is a fleeting emotion.

There came the day when Oín, who had personally been looking after me, said I was free to go. My mother came to help me get from the healing wing in the eastern halls of Erebor to the royal halls higher up inside the mountain. That was our home now, she told me. She showed me my room, which had been put out for me while I was still recovering from my battle wounds. I liked it, loved it actually. The beddings and the drapes were sewn in the King's pattern, a mixture of reddish colors. Kíli's room had a similar design, however his went in royal blue. Dís had cried when she had followed me into it. She had said something that I had heard before, perhaps from Oín in healing or from any of the other dwarves from the company that had visited me during my time there. Whoever said it, I would not hear it.

Days became weeks, and although I did not suffer from it, I began to notice that others were worrying over my behavior. I did not feel like eating, and I spent most of my time in bed or in my armchair by the fire, sleeping or just starring into the wall. At first they left me alone, but my mother and Balin especially were slowly beginning to socialize me. It annoyed me, their trying to make me go out, to have me come with them to places I did not want to go. One particular place kept coming into discussion, but whenever I heard the name of it I shut myself off. I don't know why, just that it felt better not to listen to it. Whenever I turned myself off from the world, Kíli would be there. He would sit with me by the fire, braiding his hair like mine and we'd talk about all the things we used to do together back in the Blue Mountains.

Day by day, it became harder and harder to ignore my mother and friends. They would not let me sleep, and they kept bringing me strangers who wanted to talk. I could talk to them most of the time. They were nice to me and smiled softly and happily — not full of guilt or worry or sadness like my mother, or pity like in the cases of Balin and the others. But they kept turning the conversations over, and I did not like it. So I shut myself off, and sought the company of my brother instead. For Kíli was always there whenever I needed him, and he would not talk about uncomfortable things or make me go places I did not want to go. We'd just sit by the fire, read stories to one another, laugh together and just be happy.

The more time I spent with him, the harder it became for me to see him leave every time someone else wanted to speak to me. Their company could not measure up to Kíli's, and it made me unhappy not to have Kíli there to smile at me and lift the weights off of my heart that otherwise would not budge. It seemed like my mother and the strangers noticed this, because their visits became more frequent. Oín started coming by more often, and he would give me medicines. He, too, would talk to me. The question became more urgent — they wanted me to go there. They wanted me to go see him. And whenever they asked this of me, I returned to Kíli.

Eventually I stopped leaving.

I stopped getting out of bed. I did not eat, because I did not need to. I needed nothing but to be with Kíli, to talk to him and just have him near, just like I had my entire life. I knew no world where Kíli was not constantly beside me, sharing every moment of life with me. Why should I? There was no need for me to be where Kíli was not.

I remember being in a forrest, sitting amongst the fallen leaves of autumn on a soft bed of moss in the shadow of the pines. Kíli was sitting beside me, wind blowing softly trough our hair and beard. The echoes of children's laughter would come to us from afar, because we were also playing in the woods somewhere. We were watching over ourselves, our younger selves, like guardian angels making sure our childhood together would never be ruined, that we would never be separated.

Then, suddenly, Kíli rose up, his carefree expression erased and replaced by a fiery frown.

"Come with me," he said. "There's something you need to see."

And I took the hand he was holding out to me and followed him, through woods and fields and over plains an mountains I followed. It seemed like an eternity before he slowed down in front of a pair of giant stone gates, carved with the sign of the royal Line of Durin. The gates swung open slowly, and inside of them was a darkness to thick I could not imagine stepping into it. But Kíli went in, and I could not make myself let go of his hand. I know my little brother would not lead somewhere dangerous.

As we stepped into the darkness and the gates slid shut behind us, I lost track of everything. What was up and what was down, what was real and what was not. I started feeling heavy, and the further in I walked, the more uncomfortable and cold I felt. I realized I did not want to be here and tried to turn around. It was then that Kíli's hand slipped out of mine and a bright light flickered to life all around me.

I found myself in an enormous cave, beautifully carved into the mountainside. I was accompanied not by Kíli, but by my mother and by Balin. They were standing in front of me, their eyes looking hopefully at me, still hurting with worry.

It was then that I saw the large stone column that stood in the middle of the cave, a white thing covered with wonderful patterns and inscriptions in gold that shone beautifully in the light of the fires around it. The inscriptions were in Khuzdul, which I knew better when spoken than when written. I took a few careful steps closer in an attempt to make out what the letters said.

I wish I hadn't.

Here lies Kíli, son of Dís of Durin, second prince of Erebor, honorable warrior.

Then and there, as the full meaning of the words I had just read became clear to me, the world I had built up around myself over the past year came crushing down over me. The lies which I had constructed to protect me from the truth ran through me like swords, the sheer acceptance of that truth only adding to the agony. I remember falling to the floor and crying for the first time since the battlefield, tears of grief that should have been let out long ago. I remember my mother sitting down next to me, cradling me to her chest, eager to give the comfort she had been ready to give all this time but not been allowed to. Even Balin came to me eventually, pulling both of us into an embrace which would later serve as my new form of protection, the protection I would need for many years to come while trying to get used to living my life without Kíli in it.

For however badly I wanted my brother with me, he had fallen on that battlefield and I had not. Mahal had taken him from this world but had left me, and that had been for a reason. Someone was needed to take up the royal throne in Erebor since Thorin, too, had moved on. If it was destiny or coincidence, I did not want to know, but I was that someone, and I would need to do it alone. And when my time came and my task in Middle-Earth was done, I would join my uncle and my brother in death. And then we would finally be together forever.

For some things are are simply meant to be.


End file.
